


Neptune

by bethejerktomybitch



Series: Georgia on my Mind [4]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Cruciatus Curse (Harry Potter), F/M, Pre-Relationship, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:27:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24412051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethejerktomybitch/pseuds/bethejerktomybitch
Summary: Hell began with mismatched eyes in the dark and a just as mismatched duel, Percival stumbling and taken by surprise and Grindelwald’s bone-white face shining with glee in the curse-lit bedroom. There was no real chance there and Percival knew it, but he fought with all he had nonetheless, spite burning like bile in the back of his throat.Only there was nothing left to fight for, not until Georgia Kingsley appeared.
Relationships: Original Percival Graves/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Georgia on my Mind [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1361392
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Neptune

_Stitch by stitch I tear apart  
If brokenness is a form of art,  
I must be a poster child prodigy  
Thread by thread I come apart  
If brokenness is a work of art  
Surely this must be my masterpiece_

_Sleeping At Last – Neptune_

Hell began with mismatched eyes in the dark and a just as mismatched duel, Percival stumbling and taken by surprise and Grindelwald’s bone-white face shining with glee in the curse-lit bedroom. There was no real chance there and Percival knew it, but he fought with all he had nonetheless, spite burning like bile in the back of his throat.

The fear came later, when Grindelwald had him bound and wandless on the floor, baring his teeth in a grotesque mockery of a smile. “Not bad, Percy.” he said. “I think our time together will prove quite enjoyable.”

Percival spit out a mixture of blood and saliva, still short of breath from the vicious curse that had hit him in the chest. “Fuck you.” he said hoarsely.

Grindelwald clucked his tongue disapprovingly. “Time to go to sleep, I think.” he said.

There was a flash of red, and Percival’s vision went dark.

* * *

More darkness greeted him when he awoke.

It was suffocating, so absolute that for a moment Percival wasn’t sure he was awake at all. Panic creeped at the edges of his mind and he pushed it away with all the strength he could muster, focusing on the sound of his own breathing to tether himself to reality.

He steeled himself with a conscious effort, drawing up walls of thick occlumency around his mind. Auror training and the war had prepared him – if not for this exact situation, then for something much like it. His people at MACUSA would come looking for him if he didn’t show up for work on Monday; he only had to outlast whatever Grindelwald had in store for him until then. And in the meantime, waiting and doing nothing went against every fiber of his being.

Percival sat up slowly. His chest ached, probably from the curse Grindelwald had taken him down with, but it was bearable if he didn’t focus on it too much.

He felt around in the dark and encountered rough stone walls on all sides, about eight feet apart. The ceiling was just high enough for him to stand upright, and made from the same rough material. There was no door he could find, though he felt traces of magic in the stone, most likely well-concealed warding spells. If he was still in his own apartment, Grindelwald must have created this room out of nowhere and designed it to be the perfect prison.

His wand was gone, of course, and with it his only way of casting Lumos, but when he tried to summon a ball of light using wandless magic there was nothing, not even the faintest flicker.

“Merlin’s fucking beard.” Percival cursed under his breath. “Of course.”

“Tsk, Percy. There’s really no need to curse.”

The sudden light was bright enough to blind him temporarily, and when his eyes had adjusted Grindelwald was standing in front of him, as if he had simply appeared out of nowhere. There was a glint of anticipation in his eyes that made Percival feel sick to his stomach.

“What the fuck do you want?” he asked hoarsely.

Grindelwald chuckled. “Very defiant, I see.” he said. “I wouldn’t have expected anything less. Well, we’ll just see how long it lasts.” He grinned, and Percival felt a shiver crawl down his spine. “I think you know very well what I want, Percy.”

Fear gave way to a mixture of spite and fury. He wasn’t going to give Grindelwald what he wanted. He wasn’t going to beg. _Two days,_ he told himself. _I can do this._

“Get to it, then.” he snapped. “Because I must say, so far I’m seriously disappointed by the great Gellert Grindelwald.”

This time, Grindelwald laughed out loud, the sound echoing off the stone walls and warping into something horribly sinister.

“Oh, Percy.” he said. “This is going to be so much fun. _Crucio.”_

* * *

Percival lost track of how many times Grindelwald used the Cruciatus curse on him. All he knew was that by the end of it he was shivering on the floor, hands twitching with the aftershocks of the curse, and Grindelwald was tearing at his occlumency barriers, pushing so hard he thought his head would burst.

He bit his tongue and focused on the coppery taste of blood, thought of all the people he was protecting, all the things he knew that, in Grindelwald’s hands, could do catastrophic damage. His wall held, and then the pressure vanished from one moment to the next.

When Grindelwald spoke, he didn’t sound disappointed, only faintly amused. “We’ll try this again another time.” he said. “For now…”

Percival was still slightly dazed, so he didn’t see him coming and had no chance to shield himself. Grindelwald’s foot collided with his chest full force, and something cracked audibly. The pain came a second later, and Percival gasped for air desperately, every breath setting his chest on fire with agony. “Fuck… off.” he squeezed out between wheezing breaths.

Grindelwald only smiled indulgently. “Get some rest.” he said. “You’ll need your strength.”

The room plunged back into darkness, and Percival knew he was alone again. He pressed his cheek against the cold floor, forced himself to breathe and thought _two days. Two days, two days, two days._

* * *

There were more curses, more pain, more vicious hits that shattered bone – it all blurred into one. Percival persisted through it on sheer power of will, clinging to the knowledge that this would not last forever, that there was still hope.

Then Grindelwald shattered it.

He appeared in the room that could be described in no other way but as a prison cell wearing Percival’s own face, clad in a suit from his own closet, familiar lips twisted into a cruel grin like a grimace. “What a pity you’re such a workaholic, Percy.” he said, his voice like a sharp-edged knife gliding through skin. “No one to notice you’re missing but your colleagues. And they will never realize the difference. You don’t let them close enough for that.”

Percival gasped through the burning pain in his chest, pushing himself into the most dignified position he could manage with a broken leg and several shattered ribs. “They’ll notice.” he said, breathless, and heard the desperation in his own words even as he spoke them. “You won’t get away with his. You won’t.”

Grindelwald grinned, flicking his wand between thin white fingers. “Oh, but I will.” he said. “And I think you know that too, Percy.”

Percival tried to summon up another defiant answer, but there was nothing; deep inside he knew that Grindelwald was right. The flame of hope he’d kept alive inside of his chest had died, turning instead into a dark pit of despair, and he could find no spark to light it again. No one would notice, no one would come for him; he would die in here, and the only thing he still had power over was to decide how – begging, giving up, or fighting to the last.

He gritted his teeth. “Kill me, then.” he spit out. “Kill me and get it over with. I will never give you what you want.”

Grindelwald laughed, a sound that when he made it conveyed anything but joy. “We’ll have to see about that.” he said, and raised his wand.

* * *

There was no way to mark the passage of time. Percival tried to count breaths, but found that most of the time he could only take shallow, gasping ones; he tried to count heartbeats but found his heart stopping for entire minutes as agony sent spasms throughout his body. Unconsciousness claimed him more and more often, and most of the time it was a relief; it meant that for a while, at least, there would only be nothingness.

The taste of blood had become permanent in his mouth, coppery and sharp. It was something to focus on when Grindelwald probed at his mental barriers, tearing at them furiously; sometimes it was enough, but other times, especially when he was half-delirious with pain, his occlumency shields began to slip, allowing Grindelwald to grasp at whatever memory slipped through before Percival managed to force him out again.

He was tired, so tired. All he wanted to do was sleep, sleep and finally let the pain come to an end. Grindelwald would whisper to him sometimes in a soft voice, feigning sympathy, would promise him that he would make the pain end if he only gave up, would give little bits of healing in return for smaller bits of information, and sometimes Percival had no strength left to disagree, no more capacity for pain in the name of people that were not looking for him.

He always hated himself after that, hated himself so much that he wanted to die, wished he could provoke Grindelwald into a killing curse, though he had tried before and it had not worked. In fact Grindelwald had seemed to find it enjoyable, and had retaliated with even more vicious curses, only stopping when Percival smacked his head against the stone floor so hard he passed out, bleeding profusely from a head wound.

There was no end. There would be no end. Agony was all there ever was, and all there ever would be. He longed for death, and knew that if only he gave up, if only he begged for it, Grindelwald would give it to him.

All he needed to do was to give up.

_Give up._

He closed his eyes. His occlumency shields fell, and unconsciousness took him.

* * *

An explosion dragged him back into the world.

There was a hand on his neck, right where his pulse beat weakly – soft, warm, so unlike Grindelwald that he almost shrunk back from its lack of familiarity. Someone was speaking too, and it took him a moment to register the words, his head throbbing with the effort. “Graves.” said a voice he knew but couldn’t quite catalogue. “Graves, hey, you with me?”

He forced his eyes open. Everything was blurry and trying to focus seemed to split his head in two, but he knew the face that floated in front of him – pretty, framed by blond hair, and marked with worry he had never seen there before, though she smiled when she saw he was awake. “There you are.” she said. “I was afraid you were dying on me for a second there, old man.”

Confusion mixed with his obvious head injury, making his thought sluggish and slow. “Kingsley?” he whispered.

She smiled again, something that seemed ridiculously out of place within the hell of this room. “The one and only.” she said. “Come on, let’s get you out of here, before the asshole who put you in here in the first place comes back.”

Percival felt the fear rear up in his chest, the fist of panic closing around his heart. Grindelwald could come back any moment and the he would hurt Kingsley too – Kingsley, who was here somehow, who had come for him. “No, Kingsley, you can’t be here.” he gasped. “Grindelwald… get help, he…”

He had no more air; the words died on his tongue. Suddenly there was hand on his arm, squeezing with a gentleness that was like water after weeks in a desert, almost too much to handle. “So it is Grindelwald.” said Kingsley, her voice calm. “I figured as much. All the more reason to get out of here as fast as we can. Can you stand?”

She didn’t wait for his answer; she hauled him to his feet with surprising strength, taking the brunt of his weight as his shattered leg screamed with pain, threatening to buckle under his weight. The world was spinning around him, knives sliding between his ribs with every breath.

“You can’t take me with you.” he forced himself to say, because that couldn’t just be it, it couldn’t just end like that, there had to be some caveat, and he half expected to Grindelwald to appear suddenly, laughing and revealing that this had all just been an elaborate hoax to torture him even more – let him believe for just a moment that someone had come for him just to take it all away again. “Grindelwald, he’ll find me, he…”

Kingsley squeezed his arm again. “Don’t worry.” she said. “I know a place where he won’t be able to get to you.”

She pulled him towards the front door, opened it easily, and then they were in the hallway and Percival couldn’t breathe because this couldn’t be real, it couldn’t…

Kingsley moved close to him, clasping him tightly. She smelled like flowers, and he could see, blurry as his sight was, where his blood had stained her clothes. A smile curled her lips as they formed the words “it’ll be okay”, and then she twisted them both into the darkness.

As he passed out, Percival felt the tiniest spark of hope relight in his chest.


End file.
